Luca Buvoli at the Deutsche Guggenheim

Up now and running through April 11, 2010, VCS faculty member Luca Buvoli’s outdoor installation Flight Simulator Banners With Contrail (Inverted Helix) – Project for Utopia Matters is on view at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Utopia Matters: From Brotherhoods to Bauhaus,” the installation consists of an outdoor banner that shows a two-dimensional spiral flight path leaping into three dimensions from one of the museum’s corners. (A pre-installation rendering of the project can be seen here.) The piece recalls some of Buvoli’s previous work, such as 2002’s installation Flight Simulator (Helix) at Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston, Texas.

The “Utopia matters” exhibition examines the role that utopian movements have played in shaping art throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The show presents rarely exhibited works by Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, both of whom were strongly influenced by the late 19th-century Theosophy movement founded by visionary author and New Age pioneer Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. A number of other artistic movements are also covered, ranging from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (founded in 1849 and strongly influenced by Romanticism) to more socially and politically minded movements such as Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. The continuing influence of utopian ideas in the age of new media is also addressed by the inclusion of works such as RMB City, a carnivalesque metropolis created by Chinese artist Cao Fei that only exists in the online virtual world Second Life.

In addition the banner on the Deutsche Guggenheim’s facade, Buvoli has also created a limited-edition publication to accompany the exhibition. Titled “Flipbook 2 (from Flying – Practical Training for Beginners) 1999-2000,” the 80-page book is available in a signed edition of 20 and an unsigned edition of 1000 copies. A video clip of the book’s images in motion can be seen at this page.

You can learn more about Luca at his web site. which features images and video clips of many of his other projects.